The Golden Kapok Awards Competition is an important session of the ongoing 19th Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival, China (GZDOC). After three rounds of reviews and selections, GZDOC announced 17 winners of the Golden Kapok Awards on April 17. Cities from the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) have actively taken part in the competition, with eight documentaries being listed in the finalists.
Seven cities in the GBA, namely Hong Kong SAR, Macao SAR, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan and Zhongshan, submitted a total of 111 works for the Golden Kapok Awards Competition. Eight finalists selected from them are Run the Last Mile, To the World with You, We Are Young, All In, A Long Cherished Dream, Remembering 1950, No Poverty Land and I'm So Sorry.
A poster of "To the World with You", one of the finalists of the Golden Kapok Awards, created in Guangzhou (Photo provided to Newsgd.com)
Guangzhou contributes 36 submissions, with diverse topics. For instance, the locally-produced To the World with You, the winner of the Best First Feature Documentary Award in the Golden Kapok Award Competition, shares the fantastic adventures of a family in which parents bring their child to travel to the Arctic Pole at the age of three, to the Antarctic Pole at five and to the Mount Qomolangma at eight. This film shows Chinese people's new pattern to bring up children and explores the relationship between love, growth and education in a family in the new era.
With great uncertainties and challenges emerging in the world, wars, terrorism, nuclear pollution, ecological deterioration and the outbreaks of pandemics are common issues all mankind are faced with. The winners of the Golden Kapok Awards Competition also reflect that documentary makers devote themselves to involving the important events to film actual realities in society.
For example, Reunited, the winner of the Best Feature Documentary Award, tells the story of a Syrian family scattered by the war and finally getting reunited. The filmmaker overcame great difficulties to record the hardships of the family and their unremitting efforts to reunite. Packaging the entanglement of human natures, times and fates into the documentaries, the film demonstrates contemporary documentaries' commitment to their mission and social responsibility in creation.
A poster of "Reunited" (Photo provided to Newsgd.com)
Zhang Tongdao, a documentary filmmaker and final jury member of GZDOC, highly regards the winners of this year's Golden Kapok Awards. "The significance of documentary production is to build a bridge between people of different cultures and countries. GZDOC is a cultural bridge connecting people of different cultures and races around the world," Zhang said.
Author | Nancy (Intern)
Editor | Wing, Olivia, Monica, Will, Jerry
